I'm a patchwork mess

I know that the dsmp fandom is mainly composed of minors, so while you're free to reblog and follow and whatnot, I will be maintaining a respectful distance.

My activity is largely sporadic due to irl stuff, but if you send in an ask, I will do my best to get to it... Eventually ^^;. If I haven’t answered you, I promise it’s not because I’m ignoring you or being mean, it’s just some combination of Low Brain Energy, forgetfulness, and occasional executive dysfunction. If you ever send in an ask asking for me to tag a trigger, I will do so without question as soon as I see it.

I tag my analysis stuff as “patchwork rambles dsmp edition.” I used to only really do this for Bigger Stuff (like, pages long/type it out in Google docs beforehand), but I’ve decided to go through and add the tag to some of my other stuff.

I also sometimes talk about my own Pokémon au for the dsmp under “dsmp pokémon au.” Everyone is free to make fic or art based off any of my ideas, taking as much or as little inspiration for their own works as they want. And I’d love to be @’ed if you do so!

It has a variety of environments filled with pokémon and items such that it doesn't feel empty, but there is a distinct lack of notable landmarks.

The towns are largely lifeless and unappealing. While the lack of things to do in towns encourages exploration of the surrounding environments, it skews the balance that previous pokémon games have always sought to highlight-- Paldea does not feel like a world where people and pokémon live together, side-by-side. It hardly feels like a world people live in at all.

It generally feels very mechanics-oriented. The world feels built around the existence of numerous tera raid dens and mass outbreaks cluttering the map, where the environment is ideal for running around open space in search of items and pokémon. However, this comes at the cost of feeling like a living, breathing region with its own history spread throughout and a unique sense of character. It's an understandable creative decision but one that I feel does more harm than good because while recent changes have made the mechanics more interesting, pokémon's appeal has never truly been in its game mechanics.

But I am resisting the urge to dissect it. It doesn't deserve that level of attention.

For the time being, at least, this is all I will say on the matter. I don't want to overshadow the much more serious and much more important conversation around Dream's inappropriate actions, and I wouldn't want to critique the dsmp so much that outsiders would assume movements like #dropdream and all of the outcry against him is about anything other than his very real actions towards his very real victims.

These are just. Not the same things at all. Firstly, Phil and Kristen both met as fairly well-established adults-- they were both somewhere in the realm of 27-29 when they met in 2016. While the age gap between Dream and his victims was not extreme, the experience gap was much different. People develop quite a bit over the course of their late teens and early twenties. They experience many critical changes to their living and working situations and general brain development. When Phil and Kristin met, Kristin had an established career as a behavioral therapist. When Dream met his victims, he was one of the most successful ccs of recent years and they were still in high school.

Beyond age, Phil's status as a streamer was nowhere near the same level as Dream's. Phil met Kristin when his regular audience was but a handful of people. His audience was so small that when anyone new joined and asked him to, he could give them tours of his projects. When Phil streamed, the people who watched him was mainly comprised of a small group of friends, and when Kristin came into the picture they developed a bond playing games together and chatting. They interacted in more group-oriented settings and became friends before Phil ever asked her to hang out one-on-one.

Dream, even at the time of his interactions with Amanda, was one of the most popular and quickly growing ccs on the platform. While Phil's audience couldn't have filled a lecture hall and each person could easily be conceptualized as an individual, Dream's audience rivaled the size of some entire states' populations. He interacted with his victims primarily via snapchat sexting.

There is a critical difference in power dynamics and actions between Phil and Kristin's relationship and that of Dream and his victims. Namely, Phil and Kristin were basically on equal footing as two normal adults, and their relationship developed naturally first as friends and then as romantic partners. Dream, however, was a man with millions of subscribers, undergoing an extreme boom in popularity and expansion of influence, who sent dick pics to vulnerable teenage fans on snapchat.

They're not the same.

To imply otherwise betrays at best a willingness to rush to defend your fave cc over taking a handful of minutes to listen to Phil and Kristin talking about how their relationship blossomed to see if it actually backs up your point and a clear lack of investment in them as anything other than something you can use as some kind of clap back.

But also, like. Come on. We know why it was the way it was. cc!Wilbur rushed that ending because of his concerns of getting shit done before "dsmp season/volume/chapter 2 chain of birth by 358:2 days remix," which at the time was believed to be something that would happen "soon." That's why the stream in general feels so clunky. And at that point, he had no idea who was planning what-- he didn't know if cc!Dream was actually gonna do shit in terms of c!Primeboys before the reboot, and given cc!Dream's history of dragging his feet/inaction both in the past and currently...

Yeah, I wouldn't have bet money that anything would've happened with c!Prime before the "reboot." I wouldn't have wanted to waste time trying to figure out how c!Prime would be affected by whatever I want to do with my character, not when I don't have a clue whether there's actually going to be more c!Prime. I wouldn't care about c!Prime. My focus would be on wrapping up my character. Having been in multiple rps that have died, I've been in similar positions where sometimes on an in-universe level weird shit with weird implications happens just because you're desperately trying to give your character some sort of closure before the server explodes. I get it.

Do I think that completely nullifies any critique that can be made? Of course not! Again, I'm not a fan of the finale. I've talked some shit about it, even though I know the reasons behind its flaws. I think it's very reasonable to point out the implications of c!Wilbur leaving c!Tommy when c!Dream. Is there. But I've also seen a lot of people act like that aspect of the stream was some deliberate narrative choice that held weight rather than another consequence of rushing the story and simply not thinking it through.

Deplatforming is not about hurting a public figure or "ruining their career" for what they may or may not have done, it's about protecting potential victims. When a figure's ability to use their platform responsibly and not harm others with it is called into serious question, we call for them to be deplatformed in case they have abused their power. To protect others.